The present invention relates generally to the field of label printing, and more specifically, to a cartridge label printer for printing and applying a label to a cartridge of a library system. The invention relates further to a method for operating a cartridge label printer for printing and applying a label to a cartridge.
Typically, magnetic tapes are used as long-term storage media and/or for archiving purposes. The magnetic tapes are typically enclosed in standardized cartridges. In order to differentiate the cartridges by optical pattern recognition, printed labels are typically applied to the cartridges. The labels may be human and/or machine-readable. Today, various vendors generate these labels, and end-users have to manually place them on the cartridges. Even if the labels are specified in quality categories, the machine readability and long term stability of the labels varies from vendor to vendor. Issues with reading a label—and thus, identifying a cartridge—may be time-consuming and can lead to a situation in which data on the magnetic tapes may not be available for users, thereby endangering business continuity and/or operations to restore archived data.
Additionally, manual placement of labels onto the cartridges is time-consuming and error prone. Different users may apply labels on different cartridges in different ways, which makes machine readability more difficult. Furthermore, labels from different vendors are not standardized, having different material characteristics, reflectivity and durability of the code printed on the label.